John J. Ronan

 

JOHN J. RONAN ( 1944 - ) is Professor Emeritus at North Shore Community College and a versatile and accomplished writer living in Gloucester. John writes poetry three hours a day and has published two books, The Catching Self (1996) and The Curable Corpse (1999), with Folly Cove Books, a Gloucester publisher, and two books, Marrowbone Lane (2009) and Taking the Train of Singularity South from Midtown (2017) with The Backwater Press of the University of Nebraska. He is a former National Endowment for the Arts Fellow and Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference Scholar.

John Ronan has had success both as a playwright and filmmaker. His comedic play, “The Yeats Game” was produced in New York and his one-act play “The Early Bird Special” was an award winner. His non-profit company, American Storyboard, created two award-winning films that have been shown on PBS: the first, “Gloucester’s Adventure: An American Story,” is a film about Gloucester’s celebrated schooner, which he scripted and produced, and the second movie, “American Women in Horse Racing,” which he also scripted and produced, ran state-wide on Kentucky public television.

John Ronan is a prominent literary presence in Gloucester. He served as the city’s Poet Laureate from 2008 - 2010. On his weekly public access cable tv show, 1623 Studio’s “The Writer’s Block,” John has been interviewing writers about their craft since 1990. Most importantly perhaps, John can be considered a civic poet, someone who writes about civic pride and history. His poem, “Good Harbor, Home” was read at the 2002 mayoral inauguration. His latest civic poem is “Hymn for Gloucester at 400,” composed for the celebration of Gloucester’s 400th Anniversary in 2023. The first draft of the poem was written in 2018 and the form is loosely based on what the English minister and hymnologist Isaac Watts called long hymn meter. In the poem, the man in the iconic Gloucester statue, “The Man at the Wheel,” surveys four centuries of Gloucester history with pride.

 

HYMN FOR GLOUCESTER AT 400 The Man at the Wheel beholds an ocean, As past the ocean steady eyes Transfix a deeper, distant horizon The cenotaph dead will tell you is time. He sees the Normans, Basques, the Grand Atlantic Banks, Champlain, a Frenchman Presaging Smith’s Tragabigzanda, Rechristened quickly the kinder Cape Ann. Sees Gloucester’s birth and Fisherman’s Field, A lively Dogtown, early sloops, Colonial pride and commonweal In Blynman’s Canal and early schools, In Murray, Rogers, fish and trade, Despite the crush of Crown attacks By savage British troops, charades Of regal honor, legal tax, Until he sees on Lexington Green Both Minute Men and Minute Women Renounce with arms a king and queen - The war of independence, won! The newly minted nation begins As Gloucester’s helmsman now admits Italians, Irish, Poles and Finns, The Scot, the Swede, forgiven Brits Pursuing life and liberty, happiness, Divergent faiths and customs welcome: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, The tempest-tossed, rejected, welcome Where titled idlers must start anew, Where slowly slave and native claim Their rightful freedoms, overdue, And hand-me-down hate is shamed. The helmsman looks on years of peace And war, on commerce, art, as sons And daughters succeed ashore, at sea. A watch is ended, a watch begun. As even now, he guides with skill, This mettled man, heroic cast Of eye to windward, tacking still The open ocean’s future, past: The ebb and flow and undertow Of sorrow, Patriot, Andrea Gail. . . And yet Fiesta, Horribles, hope, September schooners under sail. Below the bronze, Atlantic waves Anoint the helmsman, his wife, a boy And baby, fifty states their wake, Our bright and spangled land in convoy As we, helmsmen, helmswomen, astride With Him the foam-flecked deck, converged As one on time’s horizon, recite America’s prayer, the citizen pledge, Acclaiming to fourth and future jubilees This weatherly granite, Gloucester, proudly stand At history’s helm and brave the blustering seas.